Re: RFC: A brief guide to nulls

From: Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to>
To: dev(at)archonet(dot)com
Cc: pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: RFC: A brief guide to nulls
Date: 2003-01-15 20:41:29
Message-ID: 20030115204129.GA16969@wolff.to
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On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 17:23:09 -0000,
dev(at)archonet(dot)com wrote:
>
> How do nulls work?
> ==================
> There is one very important rule when dealing with nulls. The result of
> any operation or comparison, when applied to a null is null. The only
> exception is testing if a value is null.

I suggest rephrasing this to make it clear you need to use is null to
do this and that = null won't do what you expect.

> If you try to perform an operation on nulls, again the result is always
> null. So the results of all of the following are null:

The above isn't true (i.e. null op something isn't ALWAYS null). For example:

bruno=> select 't'::boolean or null;
?column?
----------
t
(1 row)

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